Page 33 of Thief of Night (The Charlatan Duology #2)

Not a Pet

She staggered to the Porsche where she saw the keys on the front seat. Sitting down hard on the driver’s side, she saw her face mirrored in the windshield. No makeup, like an actor offstage. Around her eye, the remains of her bruise.

What did you do? she asked Red.

He was nearby, looking like nothing more than the shadow she should have cast. Still, he didn’t answer.

She imagined he didn’t want to talk about how he’d blown up his spot and alienated the one person who could have helped him avoid Adeline’s legal traps.

Charlie put her hands on the wheel, but couldn’t make herself start the engine.

Her emotions were all over the place, her thoughts wouldn’t settle.

She’d given up grifting after Mark, afraid of how thoroughly she’d destroyed him, guilty about the man who died by a bullet meant for her.

And then she’d gone back to being a con artist after all, because it was what she was good at.

Who would she have become without Rand taking her under his wing? Someone less traumatized? More boring? Rand had the gift of making people feel special, including her. He’d made her believe in the higher calling of their profession.

But sitting in the Porsche, hungover, with Red silent and in shadow, Charlie felt a familiar despair settle over her.

She didn’t know how to fix anything. She didn’t know how to be better.

She didn’t know how to give Mr. Punch what he wanted or even be a halfway decent Hierophant, for all her bragging.

Well, she’d promised to let Malhar have a look at the Blight in the trunk. And then she’d promised it to Balthazar for services he’d already rendered. She could do that much, at least.

Malhar met Charlie at the door to a house with a scrubby yard, a couch on the porch, and a lot of cars in the driveway. Typical Amherst share house among students who’d outgrown the dorms but couldn’t afford to be on their own.

Skinny, in jeans ripped at the knees and a maroon sweater, dark hair rumpled as though he hadn’t gotten around to brushing it, Malhar blinked at her like a man who hadn’t realized how late it had grown. He appeared surprised by the early winter dark.

“How many roommates do you have?” she asked him as she walked inside his place, squirming backpack over one shoulder.

Malhar shrugged, waving vaguely toward the kitchen. “Half a dozen usually, but they get into relationships or have someone crash with them and then we get an extra one or two. Or sometimes people get into relationships and move out instead—it varies.”

Charlie suspected he couldn’t actually give her a number.

Two more couches rested in the living room, one very close to the television. A young Black man was playing a video game that seemed to involve a guy with a lot of armor fighting something with a squid for a head. He grinned at them as they passed by.

“Deon is getting his MFA in writing,” Malhar said, low-voiced. “He’s spent two semesters avoiding finishing his novel.”

“Endings are elusive,” Deon called after them defensively.

The kitchen held two more roommates, one tossing a bunch of garbanzo beans and zaatar in a plastic bowl, the other drinking coffee from an enormous mug. A big pot of lentils simmered on the stove. Over the sink, someone had strung holiday tinsel, along with a string of colorful fairy lights.

Malhar gestured toward them. “Ibrahim is chemistry. Aron is film.”

“That’s right. I am film. I am gigantic. I am unavoidable,” one of the guys—Aron, she supposed—said. “Your guest want any coffee? I just brewed a fresh pot.”

“I do,” Charlie said, before Malhar could demur on her behalf.

“We’ll come back for it,” he said and ushered her into his bedroom. A desk had been shoved against one wall and two monitors loomed above it, both with screen savers of faraway places sweeping across them.

His bed, shoved against the opposite wall, was tidily made, although the end was covered in what seemed to be freshly washed but unfolded laundry.

The floor was mostly clear, with the exception of a water bottle by the bed and a stack of files under the desk.

The door to the closet was ajar and there seemed to be a mess threatening to spill out from there—she thought she spotted a three-piece suit, of all things.

By student standards, the place was spotless.

“Do you have it?” he asked, a little breathlessly.

She nodded and shouldered off her backpack.

“And Red?” Malhar asked.

At the question, his shadow lengthened and thickened. Then Red stood at the other end of the tether, formed out of darkness.

“Shit,” Malhar said. “ Shit .”

“It’s weird to watch him do it, right?” Charlie said.

“Every time,” Malhar confirmed.

Red gave them a self-conscious half-smile. He went over to the chair by the desk and sat down.

Charlie unzipped her backpack, then pulled out the onyx netting, hoping the thing inside wasn’t about to bite her.

“Is that the Blight?” Malhar asked, squatting down beside the bed to peer into the netting.

It wasn’t solid in the way that Red was, but the onyx kept it solid enough to have a shadowy shape.

It was still roughly the size of a bobcat and occasionally opened something like a mouth to show off shadowy teeth. “Can it talk?”

Red shook his head.

“I promised Balthazar a shadow,” Charlie said. “But before that, I wanted to see if you could—I don’t know, learn something from it?”

Malhar peered down at the thing. Experimentally, he put his fingers into the bag, then yanked them back out just as fast.

“Did it try to bite you?” Charlie asked.

He shook his head. “It moved. I panicked. I’m not sure about its intentions. You’re really going to give this thing to Balthazar?”

“It’s better than it hurting someone—or being ordered to kill it as the Hierophant. What would you do, keep it as a pet? Like a reptile in an onyx fish tank you drop crickets into from time to time?”

“No,” Malhar said reluctantly. “Although when you put it that way it sounds pretty great.”

Red gave another of his barely there smiles.

“I think this thing was eating shadows. Small ones,” Charlie said. “Absorbing their powers.”

“Interesting.” Malhar peered at it.

Charlie focused on the creature in front of her. She thought of the scrapes on the wall of the Grace Covenant Church basement. “There’s something I want to know. Would there be a way for someone to control more than one shadow at a time?”

Malhar raised an eyebrow. “You know that’s not my area of study, but I guess you could make each one an offer.”

“Could a Blight like this one even understand me?” Charlie gestured toward the creature she’d trapped.

“We could do a quick experiment. Unless…” Malhar looked at Red.

He rolled his eyes. “There is no secret shadow language.”

Malhar sighed, slumping. “Right, sorry.”

Charlie got an onyx knife out of her pack, then pressed the tip against her finger with a wince.

“You’re going to feed it?” Red asked.

She wondered if the thought bothered him; she hadn’t fed him in days. It felt dangerous, letting him feed, even though the Cabal leaders had warned her that the real danger was in not doing it.

“Hopefully that guy it’s meant for—Balthazar—won’t mind sharing,” Malhar said.

Charlie got his meaning. “This won’t bond me to it, right?”

Red smiled. “I have had a great deal of blood from many people, living and dead, and I care nothing for most of them.”

Maybe Malhar was used to Red being scary at him, because he didn’t look at all disturbed by that comment.

“Okay, little Blight,” Charlie said. “Sorry we stuck you in a backpack for a full day. How about this? I’ll give you a little blood if you, uh, hiss three times.”

The shadow didn’t hiss, although it did press eagerly against the netting as though straining to lick the proffered finger.

“Let’s try again,” she said. “I’ll give you blood if you lie down.”

The shadow only strained harder against the netting.

With a sigh, Malhar reached for a plastic wrapper from among the detritus on his desk and offered it to Charlie. Smearing her blood on it, she pushed the wrapper beneath the netting. Immediately, the shadow covered it, making wet noises.

“I think we eliminated the theory it can understand you,” Malhar said. “But that could be that it’s too distracted by hunger, or that it isn’t fully manifested.”

Red regarded the Blight with some curiosity.

“But I could control it if it were tied to me,” Charlie said. “Could a person attach more than one shadow to themselves? A boy said he saw the Nine-Shadow Man, like from a fairy tale. Is that possible?”

Malhar sighed. “That would be an incredibly unethical experiment to undertake, but if you consider the energy that shadows consume to be measurable, I don’t see how one gloamist could sustain two, much less more shadows, without being drained.”

“If it’s an unethical experiment, the masks have already done it,” Red said.

Asking Bellamy might give her an excuse to be inside his stronghold, close to where her map said that piece of Red was being kept. But it would be tricky for her to explain why she wanted to know, since this job for Mr. Punch was off the books.

Which made her wonder again why investigating a massacre was something he wanted none of the other Cabal leaders to know about. Sure, it wasn’t technically her job unless Blights were involved, but it wasn’t like the Cabals would mind getting extra work out of her.

There are people in my circles with Cabal connections, ones who’ve bought shadows at events held for that sort of thing. That was what Fiona had said. Her words had gotten lost after Red’s revelations, but there was something there.

Was Mr. Punch getting her to investigate another Cabal member who’d been selling shadows? Was he planning some blackmail of his own?

As her thoughts returned to Bellamy, the missing part of Red, and unethical experiments, Malhar continued studying the Blight.